KCR govt sus­pends col­lec­tor over EVM tam­per­ing charge

HYDERABAD: The Te­lan­gana gov­ern­ment on Satur­day or­dered the sus­pen­sion of Vikarabad col­lec­tor and district mag­is­trate, Syed Omar Jaleel, for al­legedly tam­per­ing with elec­tronic vot­ing ma­chines (EVMs) de­spite an election pe­ti­tion on the Vikarabad assem­bly con­stituency re­sults pend­ing in the high court.

The or­der fol­lowed a di­rec­tion from the Election Com­mis­sion (EC) of In­dia, which acted on a pe­ti­tion filed by Te­lan­gana Congress lead­ers last week.

On Fe­bru­ary 1, the col­lec­tor opened the strong room con­tain­ing sealed EVMs per­tain­ing to Vikarabad assem­bly con­stituency and un­sealed as many as 122 EVMs on the pre­text of in­spect­ing their avail­abil­ity for the up­com­ing Lok Sabha elec­tions.

This was de­spite a pend­ing election pe­ti­tion on the out­come of assem­bly polls in Vikarabad in the high court. As per EC rules, the EVMs can­not be touched till the pe­ti­tion is dis­posed of.

In a let­ter to Te­lan­gana chief sec­re­tary S K Joshi, EC di­rec­tor Nikhil Ku­mar said Jaleel had re­sorted to unau­tho­rised open­ing of some EVMs in the assem­bly con­stituency which was in­volved in an election pe­ti­tion.